I have mixed feelings about New Mexico a state that forces me to face my feelings every time I visit. The poverty of New Mexico is visible and is one side of the two faces presented here. The other side is the history, the food and the sheer physical beauty. New Mexico is intriguing and beautiful but like that long sought after date she eats with her mouth open and makes you want to run out of the restaurant never to see her again.
I have to get over my irritation because there is a long list of great artists who have found in New Mexico an endless source of inspiration. Ansel Adams climbed on his station wagon in 1941 and saw a potentially excellent picture which, with some judicious editing became Moonrise, Hernandez and is one of the iconic photos of the 20th century.
We drove right past Hernandez 2022 in mid morning light and greatness as usual passed us by. But we were enjoying the day because New Mexico is a great place to drive through and look at. Or to run through and sniff at, if you're Rusty.
New Mexico refuses to submit to US Anglo culture in its entirety. But this isn't Old Mexico, this is the land of Spanish descent, ruled by people descended from Spain transferred to the New World. Architecture is adobe, real or fake, road signs point to towns and geographical features with Spanish names.
I could spend a summer wandering this state, and I will one day driving the mountains and the villages seeking out the light that makes this state shine.
I would love to immerse myself in the culture of red and green sauces, of gas station food made to order and discovering the perfect sopapilla. We stopped on the outskirts of Santa Fe to wash clothes at a five star laundry in a strip mall and Valentina's was across the way offering New Mexican food for breakfast. I had hue's rancheros with green sauce and Layne had micas (tortilla strips cooked in a sauce) with a sopapilla each, a tortilla fried puffy and pillowy soft.
Santa Fe, more properly known as the Royal City of the Holy Faith of St Francis of Assisi appeals to me not just because it's named for an Umbrian like myself (n one is likely to name a town after me especially as St Francis has taken most of them already). Joking aside Santa Fe takes the adobe theme all the way, a mixture of modern and ancient, a plaza downtown with Native Americans selling handcrafts, and narrow streets and no damned parking. This is where New Mexico drives you nuts. The meters require an app and a monthly subscription. We should have risked a ticket and gone for a walk but we goody two shoes were not wanting a fine so we kept driving. Grr. The city I wanted to enjoy put me in a bad mood.
We drove out on the Turquoise Trail into the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque. The range has no single peak but tops out over 10,000 feet and the idea was to camp someplace cooler than the desert floor.
Highway 14 joins New Mexico's two biggest cities over fifty miles of winding desert hills. It was lovely to be away from the freeway.
I don't know how they pronounce the name of the town but I do know its a former coal mining center transformed into an artist's town to attract tourists in the 21st century. When we drove through there looked to be many more visitors clogging the place than the 149 residents the town boasts.
It was our last day before returning to the southern deserts so we set out to drive the national forest and find a place to spend the night.
It was an odd spot, an abandoned parking lot at the entrance to the forest but for one night we didn't feel like climbing up into the woods to park deeper in.
The evening turned dark and thundery but only a few drops of rain actually fell and we tucked ourselves up with Layne's not yet famous eggplant and chorizo stack. The chorizo is made from soy and it was good enough I extracted a promise to make some more in the future. Rusty had his kibbles and chicken al fresco as he prefers it.
A 6:30 start the next morning saw us in Benson, Southern Arizona at 2:30 pm after a day of freeway driving into the desert summer. The circuit of high altitude public land boondocking was over. What a pity.
